


Zero Sum

by lodessa



Series: Balancing Act [4]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Complicated Relationships, Divergent / Not Headed Towards Season 4, Explicit Sexual Content, Infidelity, Insults, M/M, Mirror Sex, Oral Sex, Post Movie, Rimming, Unresolved Emotional Tension, and both of them and lilly, as well as weevil/veronica, references to logan/veronica
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:28:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28100934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: “I brought alcohol,” Logan offers, setting the brown paper bag down on the counter and then flinging himself immediately across the whole ass couch.“Well then, I guess the answer to ‘what the hell you are doing here’ is day drinking,” he shakes his head, not really sure how to respond to any of this.  There’s nowhere to sit, except basically on top of Logan, so he leans against the counter instead, moving the bag and noticing just how heavy it is and the sound of bottles clinking together.  “Heavy day drinking, unless you are hosting a party at my place I don’t know about.”“I couldn’t remember what kind of booze you liked, or maybe I never knew,” Logan shrugs, stretching out a little further somehow.  Sometimes he’s like a damned cat, long and so bendable he might as well not have bones.
Relationships: Logan Echolls/Eli "Weevil" Navarro
Series: Balancing Act [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/229985
Comments: 12
Kudos: 16





	Zero Sum

Eli opens his door and is surprised to find it is Logan Fucking Echolls standing in front of it. Logan, who strides into Eli’s place as though he is expected, as though this is something he does all the time.

_Sure Logan, come on in. Make yourself at home,_ Eli thinks sarcastically to himself but outwardly he keeps it to an eye roll. Better not to give anything away like surprise or discomfort.

“I brought alcohol,” Logan offers, setting the brown paper bag down on the counter and then flinging himself immediately across the whole ass couch.

“Well then, I guess the answer to ‘what the hell you are doing here’ is day drinking,” he shakes his head, not really sure how to respond to any of this. There’s nowhere to sit, except basically on top of Logan, so he leans against the counter instead, moving the bag and noticing just how heavy it is and the sound of bottles clinking together. “Heavy day drinking, unless you are hosting a party at my place I don’t know about.”

“I couldn’t remember what kind of booze you liked, or maybe I never knew,” Logan shrugs, stretching out a little further somehow. Sometimes he’s like a damned cat, long and so bendable he might as well not have bones. 

It is this thought that keeps Eli from even looking down to see what he’s opening as he uncrews the lid of the first bottle his hand comes into contact with. He considers getting out some glasses, but decides that’s not the kind of occasion this is, instead taking a swig straight from the bottle.

“Whiskey,” he notes pausing for a moment before adding, “Scotch. Smoky more than peaty. Somehow I’m not surprised you’d bring this.”

“I’m not sure whether I should be surprised to hear you giving tasting notes or not.”

“This fine, or do you want one of these other bottles for yourself?” Eli resigns himself to asking, ignoring the backhanded compliment or direct jab.

“The whiskey is fine. I just figured you might prefer something else.”

“Don’t tell me you brought tequila, like I’m some walking stereotype,” Eli shakes his head, taking another drink of the scotch and closing his eyes for a moment to enjoy the burn of it going down his throat.

“Hey, I happen to like tequila,” Logan replies defensively. “There’s vodka in there too, you know in case you are a basic bitch.”

He smirks with that last comment, but Eli knows him well enough to know there’s something up. Echolls is always pretty high strung, but Eli can feel the anxiety wafting off of him more than usual.

Part of him wants to tell Logan to get the hell out, find someone who cares to listen to his problems, but that’s hardly the way to talk to someone who has shared his girlfriend with you (more than Logan knows Eli suspects), someone you’ve shared a bed with, shared orgasms with… someone you’ve fucked.

“Stop being a couch hog,” he tells him instead, shoving Logan’s feet out of the way so he can sit down and passing him the bottle at the same time.

They sit there passing the bottle back and forth for a while, and Eli is starting to really wonder what Logan’s angle is, what he’s really here for, when Logan finally opens his mouth.

“Veronica is cheating on me,” Logan announces. “She’s sneaking around behind my back, like she thinks I don’t know what that looks like.”

Eli knows this is a **thing** for Logan, going back to high school. Knows about Lilly; because he was one of the people she was screwing on the side. Knows about Caitlin; because, that was his cousin. He can only imagine all the girls that might have fucked around on Echolls between then and now.

Eli can’t help wondering if what Logan is talking about is those times Veronica’s been showing up here, or if there is someone else, or more than someone else, she’s screwing on the side. He tells himself it doesn’t matter to him, not like she’s his girlfriend, but that idea definitely leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

He wonders for a hot second if Logan knows, if that’s the whole point of this, to see if he’ll confess, but that doesn’t seem like Logan. If Logan knew Eli was hooking up with Veronica behind his back after he’d invited him into their bed… he’d confront him. He wouldn’t beat around the bush, he’d just show up swinging. He’d be in Eli’s front yard, giving all his neighbors a front row seat to all three of their dirty laundry. That kind of dramatic meltdown explosion is exactly Logan’s style.

“Is that why you suggested the whole threeway thing?” he considers, not bothering to suggest that maybe Logan is imagining it when he knows perfectly well that’s not true. Sure he’s not going to volunteer the information about what’s been going on between him and V, but he won’t volunteer to lie either. “Trying to handle whatever she’s trying to get her fix of without you in a way you had a say in?”

Logan surprises him by not getting defensive about that, “No,” he sounds like he believes it. “This is more recent.”

How does it feel, he wonders, to be the one cheated on instead of the one cheated with? Clearly not great, but is it worse to be lied to or to have someone not even bother with the pretense? Eli tells himself he prefers it this way: honesty and no bullshit, but there’s something about not having a right to your reactions that he’s so tired of being eaten away at by.

He’s allowed to be broken up about Jade, even though she’s in the right. Hell, the boys want him to call her a bitch and talk about how he’s going to take her to court and get Valentina back. His feelings about losing his wife and kid are allowed.

So a year later that’s easier than it once was. This, this only gets more fucked up.

“So why are you here, Logan? If you think Veronica is lying to you, why not talk to her about it?”

He’s still pretty sure that Logan doesn’t know about what he and Veronica have been up to lately, or at least that he’s not admitting to himself whatever gut feeling he might have, but if so then it doesn’t make sense why he’s here. Surely Echolls has someone else he could go to to spill his guts, someone who is actually a friend. Someone he actually trusts even.

“I thought about it,” Logan says, “But then I had a better idea.”

With that he smiles, that smile that all their high school teachers had learned to dread. It makes Eli tense too, but in a very different way.

“Oh?” he responds, like it is an idle reply but he feels his curiosity revving up. What does Logan want from him this time? 

“Two can play that game, right? I refuse to be the clingy, paranoid, pathetic cuck this time. So fuck it. If she wants to sneak around behind my back… I can do the same to her.”

“Oh?” Eli finds himself sitting there with his mouth gaping, as he suddenly realizes exactly why Logan is here.

Logan is here for the same reason Veronica has been lately. Logan is here to get back at Veronica by paying her back in kind, though Eli’s not sure that the revelation would hurt her the way it has so clearly fucked Logan up suspecting what she’s been up to.

Then again, he’s never exactly sure why she’s showing up either. There’s obviously a reason, a reason both of them are choosing him for this (he’s not naive enough to think that the actual reason they are fucking around each other is about him, but they are both coming to him for it) but the hell if he knows what it is.

He’s not totally sure why he’s playing along so nicely for them either, even though he made himself a promise a lot time ago never to be someone’s side piece again. Sure, he enjoys it, but it isn’t like he doesn’t still have other options, ones that have a hell of a lot less baggage. But he’s not going to send Logan away any more than he has been Veronica.

“I believe there was talk of me begging,” Logan sets down the bottle and sits up straight, learning towards Eli. “Is that what would turn you on?”

“Well we both know it turns you on,” Eli smirks, ignoring the thumping of his heartbeat speeding up, not taking a moment to consider if it’s surprise, or anticipation, or what that’s causing it. Yes, Logan is getting to him, but that doesn’t mean he needs to let on about that just yet. “So tell me Echolls, just what is it you want?”

“Let’s fuck,” Logan says like it isn’t a big deal, like there isn’t a lot of pride and baggage to consider. Like it isn’t different doing this, without Veronica there in the middle of it. 

“You know, for a minute there you had me worried. Like maybe you wanted to have a heart to heart, talk about your feelings.”

“False alarm I guess” Logan answers, putting one hand on each of Eli’s thighs and looking him straight in the eye. “The only feelings I want to talk about with you are sexual in nature. Surely there’s still things you want to do to me, want me to do to you.”

“You really are a goddamn mess, Echolls. You know that, don’t you? But sure, why not? It’s not like I have anything better to do today.”

Logan flings himself at Eli, without waiting for further prompting: mouth open, tongue probing, no coy hesitation. So Eli responds in kind, pushing back, turning towards Logan, counter attacking with his whole body as he pushes Logan against the side of the couch, wedging one leg between both of Logan’s as he shifts on top of him.

Logan squirms under him, gripping Eli’s shoulders, moaning as Eli claims his neck, kissing and nipping and sucking at that long exposed expanse of pale throat. 

He lets Eli mark him, maybe because he wants Veronica to notice, or maybe because he likes the way it feels too much to protest. Eli doesn’t look too closely at why he wants to mark Logan, at why it feels so damned good to leave blotches of color, bruises just as sure as those he could leave with a closed fist.

“Fuu-ckk…” Logan groans thrusting his hips up against Eli’s, grinding crotch to crotch so that there’s no mistaking the feeling of their dicks rubbing against each other through the fabrics of both of their clothes.

His hands push up under Eli’s shirt and Eli takes the hint, sitting up to pull it over his head and tossing it carelessly out of the way and then doing the same to Logan’s. Logan reaches out to pull him back in and Eli bats his hands away, grabbing both of them and guiding them both over Logan’s head and holding them there, wrists pinned together, leaving him exposed and at Eli’s mercy. Logan doesn’t resist.

“You like that don’t you?” he taunts, leaving one hand holding Logan’s in place as he relaxes under Eli’s control. “When I take your power away.”

Logan shivers, “... yes.”

Eli rewards that admission with a kiss, slow and thorough but less rough than his previous ones, meeting the way Logan is thrusting up against his with the movement of his own hips as they dry hump each other like the kids they once were. 

No need to front, no audience to prove something to or leave some sort of impression with. There’s just Echolls under him, all over him. 

Logan whimpers as Eli pulls back slightly, but quiets as he uses his free hand to reach between them and flick open the button to Logan’s pants and then drag down the zipper.

He shudders as Eli traces the shape of his dick through his boxer briefs, starting at the head and then running his hand down the shaft until he reaches and cups his balls.

Logan breaks free of Eli’s idle grip on his wrists and attacks the opening of his pants, clearly moving to mirror what Eli is doing to him, but Eli has other ideas.

“Lift your hips,” he instructs and Logan complies like an overeager puppy, letting Eli drag both his jeans and his underwear down his thighs in one motion. Eli gets his own pants the rest of the way open and equals the playing field, kneeling between Logan’s thighs and holding him down flat with a palm pressed against the defined v of Logan’s hips, as he shifts so that their dicks are more or less pressed parallel against each other.

He wraps his hand around both of them and tugs, jerking them both off with a single motion. The feeling of the length of Logan pressed against his own, from the head all the way down to where their balls kiss, combined with the familiar pleasure of his own hand draws a low groan from Eli’s throat, while Logan makes a sort of keening sound and his eyes roll back in his head.

Logan never does anything halfway, and Eli hates that about him, but it’s also intoxicating. There is a way that Eli can’t resist matching whatever high or low Logan reaches. Sometimes that’s bad news, but right now it lets him get lost in the moment.

“Holy shit…” Logan exhales. “Where the hell did you learn this trick?”

“It’s not exactly rocket science,” he deflects, not wanting to follow that conversation to its natural conclusion. “Seems like it’s getting the job done, though.”

He keeps his pace steady, not giving either of them a break, but holding back from reaching the inevitable conclusion at the same time. Keeping them both on the edge of something.

“You think we would have hated each other less if we’d done this back in high school?” Logan breathes, interrupting the moment with his words. “Or would it just have added fuel to the bonfire?”

“Is there any way to get you to just shut up and not ruin the moment?” he evades, thinking it would have just heightened everything, thinking they might have taken it to a lethal level.

Logan runs his tongue across his lower lip and Eli has a strange deja vu sensation of the taste of blood from a split lip.

“Hard to talk when my mouth is full,” he offers, moving his hands to Eli’s hips and urging them up and in, as he learns back further against the couch.

It takes a bit of readjusting, as he’s forced to let go of both of their dicks. Logan wriggles down the couch a bit and Eli up. His knees end up on either side of Logan’s chest, wedged right at his armpits, as he steadies himself with one of his hands gripping the arm of the couch so he can lean forward into Logan’s waiting mouth.

It’s not graceful, that’s for sure, but that doesn’t really matter as Logan’s lips close around him.

He wants to know where Logan learned to suck dick, but he refuses to ask, just as he refuses to moan right away at the sensation, pressing his knuckles to his face and biting into his own flesh to keep the sound from escaping.

Logan gives head like he does everything: 200% commitment. Boy has never known when to pull back or call it enough. Right now that extends to the way he’s fucking his own mouth with Eli’s dick, grabbing Eli’s ass and pulling him down onto his mouth more completely.

Part of him loves this, the thrill of secrets, the way these people who are too good for him keep rolling up looking for more of what he has to offer. There’s a certain appeal to being people’s vice, their weakness.

There’s another part, a part that’s tired of secrets and scraps, but it is difficult to listen to that voice with Logan’s mouth and hands on him.

He gives in to Logan’s hands’ urging, reaching down to run a hand over Logan’s head as he bucks into the warm suction he’s offering. 

“Fuckk…” he shudders, feeling his restraint slipping. “You really do love dick don’t you? Or is it my ass specifically?”

He hadn’t meant to say the second bit, hadn’t meant to think it, but it slips out.

Logan pulls back and stares up at him, a welcome change from their usual relative height. His pupils are dilated and his breathing uneven, his face flushed.

“I want to eat your ass,” he exhales, without a hint of irony, just the heavy weight of horniness without any sort of filter.

The way he says it, so flat and certain… Eli doesn’t think he’s ever let himself want anything that openly, let alone… 

It doesn’t matter. What matters is what Logan is asking for, or offering, and the twitch of Eli’s already throbbing dick when he does.

“What’s stopping you?” he replies. It’s a yes, but one that avoids saying what he wants. That’s the kind of answers Eli is best at.

“This would be a lot easier on a bed,” Logan comments, “You do have one of those in this dump, right?”

“Sure thing, princess,” Eli laughs at that, at the way they still feel the need to needle each other a little, even in the middle of this.

He extricates himself from Logan and stands, reaching out to help Logan up as well. Logan takes his offered hand, stumbling slightly as he does, due to the way his pants are bunched around his legs, their bodies colliding.

Eli reaches up and drags Logan’s head down into his, running his hands over Logan’s well muscled shoulders and down to his tight toned ass. 

It’s not the body of a man maintaining a healthy lifestyle any more than his own is, just in a different way. Eli wonders what it would be like to be motivated to action in that direct way, to channel all your frustrations and insecurities and raw edges into sculpting your physical form, instead of drowning them in a six pack or turning them into knives to throw at those around you, instead of letting them twist inside at you until you come at everything sideways.

Not that the intense gym routine seems to be doing anything to stop the rest of it, but still… to be driven rather than paralyzed.

“Come on,” he tilts his head towards the bedroom door, as he kicks his way free of his pants and boxers, giving Logan’s ass one more good squeeze before letting go. “Your ass is definitely too heavy to carry.”

Logan catches up with him at the threshold of the doorway, grabbing him by the thighs and pushing him up against the frame, lifting him just enough to get him off the ground like he’s making a point.

“Who’s the princess now, huh?” he smirks, just before prying Eli’s mouth open with his tongue again.

That’s the moment when Eli knows he’s going to take Logan up the ass again today. This doesn’t end with any other interpretation of fucking. 

They do make it to the bed, eventually. 

Without Veronica there, without a mediator or director, witness or distraction, this is both more and less than it was with her there.

Not that she isn’t, in a way. The ghost of her presence surrounds them, and more distantly Lilly’s too. This isn’t about just about them, but it isn’t not about them either. 

The itch Logan showed up to scratch, the way he collapses across Eli’s bed all long limbs and bedroom eyes, that isn’t because of either of them, but at the same time Logan wouldn’t have actually shown up today without the push of the way things with Veronica are falling apart for him.

And Eli, sure he’d have noticed Logan Echolls, mouthy 09er asshole with the famous dad and the penchant for self destruction, but would he have started thinking about fucking or fighting him instead of just rolling his eyes, if it hadn’t been for that little push of hearing what he did from Lilly all those years before?

It’s impossible to separate it all, no way to know what each part would be without the others. So Eli doesn’t try, just like he doesn’t correct Logan when he murmurs “Weevil…” and reaches out both arms as he joins Logan on the bed, a name Eli hasn’t gone by for longer than he wore it like armor.

It’s easier to take that back on, though, to slip back into that old version of himself. It was easier, then, to want things and easier, then, not to need them.

So they match each other, grope for grope, hands grabbing and holding and legs tangling and Eli swallows down whatever thoughts he has about their relative shapes, chasing that unwelcome thought with the way Logan is grabbing his ass like his life depends on it and the feeling of Logan’s hard on pressing against his leg.

One thing Eli has learned is that you have to be prepared to lose anything good that comes your way. The other thing he’s learned is that means you make the most of it while it’s happening.

Logan cups his balls and Eli shifts his weight, coming down on top of Logan from his position mostly next to him. He sits up and runs his hands from Logan’s annoyingly toned stomach up to his chest, before going back to that earlier motion of grasping both of their dicks at the same time. 

“I’m not ready to be done yet,” Logan warns with a sharp intake of breath, and Eli relishes the implied admission: that Eli could accomplish that like this without even really trying.

“Still want to rim me?” he asks.

“Yes,” Logan swallows.

“Hoping to get fucked after that?” Eli presses, daring to push a little further.

“More than hoping,”Logan shudders into Eli’s hand. “I know you won’t be able to resist the chance to have me under you like that. ”

“And you want to be,” Eli draws out. “You want me to have you every which way don’t you?”

“I showed up here today for that very purpose,” Logan parries. “As I told you, specifically. Should I be worried about your listening comprehension?”

Eli rolls his whole head at that one and off of Logan, looking away towards the ceiling. 

He feels Logan’s hand on his hip, urging him over onto his side, and then his mouth on the back of Eli’s neck, and part of him jumps a little knowing he’s there where he can’t see him but he takes a deep breath and relaxes into it. 

He can feel Logan’s tongue tracing the lines of his ink across his skin, at the same time his hand moves ever so slowly along Eli’s hip bone. 

For all his impatient talk, he’s clearly going to take a while with this, and Eli closes his eyes and just feels what it is like to be touched this way, the hard aggression of their earlier wrestle on the couch gone and something that he can pretend is affection emerging.

Knowing Logan it’s more likely teasing, or just needing a break like an over excited puppy, but for all the recent booty calls it’s been a while since someone took anything resembling their time with him and it shocks him in a way that Logan sucking him off or announcing he wants to be fucked by Eli couldn’t.

He remembers a different hand, a different mouth… another ghost, but then catches himself, eyes blinking open to ground himself in reality instead of the past.

What he’s confronted with is a pair of discarded women’s underwear on the carpet in front of him… a pair of Veronica’s underwear and for a moment he thinks Logan must see them too, but he doesn’t react to Eli’s sudden tensing, except to stop and linger on the spot he was at with his tongue mapping, a few extra laps and then the suction of his lips replacing it.

Logan’s hand makes its way into the hair surrounding his dick, but he doesn’t take him in hand, instead leaving his fingers splayed to either side, two above and the other three underneath, against but not grabbing his balls. 

He doesn’t make a comment about the way Eli is still completely hard, instead continuing his path down Eli’s spine with his mouth and for a moment Eli wonders if what he said about Logan shutting up actually got to him this time.

Logan hits the base of his spine, moving both hands to Eli’s ass as his tongue presses between the cleft of it. Then he slides the top hand along Eli’s thigh, urging that leg forward so that he’s spread open for Logan’s attention, as he drags his tongue slowly down between his cheeks and towards his hole.

He circles around the rim first, then across one way and then another. The hand not holding Eli’s leg in place moves between them, pressing his palm to Eli’s balls and extending his fingers around the base of his dick.

“Feel free to cry out my name,” Logan says against his skin, before darting his tongue forward, pressing into the rim of Eli’s ass, only a little that first time but then more the second.

Well hell, this has never been a particular fantasy of Eli’s, but damn if he doesn’t moan, unsure if he wants to buck into Logan’s hand or his mouth more. 

“Fucking hell…” he shudders, as Logan alternates the fucking motion of pushing his tongue in and out with a circular swirl. “This something they teach in the military or…”

Logan squeezes his balls a little, speeding up his tongue at the same time, and Eli doesn’t finish the rest of the sentence. 

He almost doesn’t want to stop Logan, when the time comes. The idea of finishing with Logan’s tongue up is ass and his hand around his dick suddenly seeming like a real legit option, but some part of his brain remembers than he promised to fuck Logan properly and that making good on that matters to him, to his pride, to whatever glorious but fucked up things this is between them.

“Logan…” he manages, “we’d better…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence and just hopes that Logan won’t make him do so, won’t make him admit that if Logan doesn’t stop this is going to be over and Eli will be reduced to the options of blowing Logan or jerking him off when he made other promises.

“You sure?” Logan asks, pulling his tongue out and moving his lips across Eli’s ass cheeks instead. “I can do this all day.”

“Do you want me to fuck you or not?” Eli tells him.

“Yessir,” Logan says in that way of his that’s so enthusiastic it’s both sarcastic and not. He lets go of Eli and Eli rolls back over to face him, taking in his flushed state. It’s obvious that whole thing wasn’t just for Eli’s benefit, but still he feels like he needs to find a way to one up Logan a bit, to prove something.

“Come here,” Eli says, standing up and indicating the door towards the bathroom. “I bet you love watching yourself getting fucked don’t you?” 

He stops to fish around in his nightstand, keeping an eye on Logan out of the corner of his eye as he swallows hard and quips, “Well, I am awfully pretty to look at,” body language at odds with the cocky comment.

“You probably jerk off in front of the mirror,” Eli teases, but he fails to put any bite into it. Logan gets up and crosses to him and Eli reaches down and casually strokes his dick a few times, not that it needs to be brought back to life.

“You do it in the dark? Eyes closed?” Logan says just as absentmindedly, returning the favor with his own hand.

There’s nowhere else to divert the restlessness, the need to act that Logan brings out in him. Eli stops himself from answering whether this is turning all that tension in a fresh direction or if all the tension has been a result of damming this up.

“Come on,” he urges, guiding them into the bathroom mostly by muscle memory. 

Logan takes the condom out of his hand and tears it open, grabbing the back of Eli’s neck and looking him in the eyes as he rolls it down over Eli’s dick.

He lets go and lets Eli turn him to face the counter, bracing his hands against the mirror. 

_Why me?_ he can’t help wondering, even as the evidence that it very much is the case standing right in front of him.

That’s the difference, with just the two of them here. Logan intentionally drove to Eli’s house. He’s here by choice and that choice can’t be written off as just titillating his girlfriend, trying to put a little spark back into their relationship. There’s no one here to perform for: other than each other.

“You going to do this, or just stand there admiring the view?” Logan complains, and Eli uncaps the lube and steps a little closer behind him.

What made him decide to come here today? Why Eli? Why Weevil?

“Patience, man. What are you, a middle aged white woman at a department store?”

“You into cougars, Weev?”

“I’d say you are more of a hyena,” he shakes his head, pausing to pour some of the lube on his hand before adding, “Maybe a jackal.”

“Did you just admit you’re into me?” Logan exclaims with what might be mock surprise but might not be.

“I’m literally getting ready to fuck you,” He points out, another answer that isn’t, as he runs his fingertips down the cleft of Logan’s ass, using the other hand to add a little more lube as he makes his way back up and then back down again, running right over Logan’s asshole without stopping to probe in at all, teasting.

“True. I’m just not sure if that means you’re more horny than choosy, or you hate yourself more than you despise me, or…”

“Barely being able to stand you doesn’t mean you aren’t a tempting bit of tail, Echolls.” 

He refuses to tell Logan what he wants to hear, that he hasn’t hated him in years, that in a different life they might have been friends or something, that desire and disgust are only a breath apart sometimes.

He pushes a finger a little way in, so Logan doesn’t have time to react to his words before his actions. 

“I like you,” Logan says finally, groaning as Weevil works that finger further into him. “I know we’ve never gotten along, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like you, don’t trust you.”

He doesn’t trust Logan… well doesn’t trust him to make a damned sensible decision at any point in his privileged life. Not that Eli makes the most amazing decisions himself, for all of his best attempts to. He guesses he does trust Logan in a certain light: with a secret, to follow through, in some primitive way that he doesn’t have words for.

“You,” he swallows, meets Logan’s eyes in the mirror for a moment before looking away. “You are crazy. Maybe that’s what I like about you, Logan, the way you are off your damned rocker.”

“But you do like me,” Logan probes.

“Enough of that now,” Eli protests, continuing to finger fuck Logan. “You keep going on about this I’m going to stop this and we can paint each other’s nails or some shit.”

Logan keeps talking like that and shit is going to get real. Shit gets real and they are going to go somewhere neither of them wants, for better or worse. Best case scenario is a blowout fight and the worst… Eli doesn’t want to think about that.

He focuses on making sure he’s adding enough lube and working Logan open for him. That’s the kind of happy ending they are both equipped for. 

The mirror was supposed to be for Logan’s benefit, but Eli can’t pretend he’s not already enjoying it too, watching Logan react, seeing exactly the effect he’s having as he scissors his fingers open a bit and Logan’s eyes roll back in his head.

Eli has always gotten off on the reaction of anyone he’s hooking up with to whatever he’s doing. Nothing feels better than knowing exactly how much someone wants you, needs you, enjoys you. Even if it’s a lie, but today it isn’t a lie. He can’t pretend this is a lie, that Logan hasn’t been thinking about this for weeks if not months, maybe longer.

Every time he thrusts his fingers back into Logan, Logan’s breath catches. Every time. 

“Don’t be a tease,” he groans, arching into the contact.

“You’re so easy to tease,” Eli tells him, but he lets his dick rest against Logan, just a little higher than its destination, sliding along his ass crack.

“Weevil…”

“Echolls?”

“Really, I’m asking you to put your dick in me and you are reverting back to my last name?”

“It’s not like you ever call me my actual name,” he snaps back, before thinking.

Logan is quiet for a moment. It’s almost weird for him to be. He looks down towards the sink for a good pause and then back up to face Eli’s gaze in the mirror.

“I was never sure…” he starts but then stops. “Right. Eli. Eli Fucking Navarro will you please stop being a tease and fuck me.”

Eli forgets the sarcastic reply that he’d had on this tongue the moment before and his free arm finds its way around Logan across his chest and he’s kissing those ridiculous shoulders and Logan’s eyes widen in surprise and only then does he draw back enough to adjust Logan to have his knees wider spread and more bent, line himself up with the opening of Logan’s ass as he pulls out his fingers and neither of them break eye contact in the mirror as he sinks in.

He reaches around to wrap his hand around Logan’s dick, as he has to let go of the rest of his torso to get the angle right to push further in. Logan adjusts too, pressing his hands harder against the mirror and his hips harder back into Eli.

“Did you know… the mirror… the bathroom. Back at Neptune High sometimes I’d imagine, us finding each other alone. Crashing into tile-”

Eli knows exactly what he means, and that makes him hate Logan all over again, and at the same time not. Hormones and resentment and being one walking nerve ending. Fucking and fighting, equal releases for the buildup of tension.

“You should be glad it didn’t happen like that,” he groans, thrusting a little more forcefully despite himself.

They’d been live wires back then, coming in hot. Two magnets slamming together or apart. There is some of that here, but nothing like the insanity of their unfinished teenage brains spiked with fresh losses. It could just have easily ended in blood as cum.

“Even we weren’t that foolhardy,” Logan insists, like he knows what Eli just thought, “Not when it mattered.”

Eli leans back a little further, guiding Logan to do the reverse, finding the angle he can get deeper at, balls meeting with every thrust now. 

“Speak for yourself,” he manages, though it’s taking most of his focus now to keep his pace steady between the reality of Logan here and now and the mental image Logan just more or less confessed as a longtime fantasy.

“Christ-” Logan shudders and bucks under him.

“Wrong again,” he grunts, giving in a little to really and properly fuck Logan the way he’s been asking for.

“Je-sus?” The snarky response is undercut by Logan’s breathlessness, but Eli is too caught up in the momentum building between them to point that out.

The sweat drips down his face, rolls down his arms. Logan’s hands on the mirror are surrounded by a halo of steam. 

Neither of them would have dared get caught like this, not then. Caught fighting, why not? Caught committing an actual crime, sure. Caught in a moment of pleasure, absolutely not.

They aren’t those boys anymore, not that the mirror would let them forget it. He doesn’t need to win. Hell, Eli isn’t even sure if there is such a thing as winning anymore. 

“C’mon…” Logan urges, causing Eli to realize that he’s slowed down a bit, lost in his thoughts. “I didn’t come here for you to be gentle with me.”

So he isn’t, not here with no witnesses other than their own memories. The bathroom echoes with the sound of skin slapping on skin, of moans and ragged breathing. Logan is loud. It’s not like that’s new information, sexually or otherwise, but Eli somehow finds himself surprised once again.

It’s what makes Logan… well Logan. The abandon, the bravado, the desperate screaming need to be heard.

He’s hungry, just as hungry as Eli is for so many things in life, but the difference is that Logan moans out loud, “Harder, take me like you mean it!” and Eli silently thinks, _more than you’ll ever know,_ and lets his movement and hands do the talking.

Logan finishing is a relief, as Eli is struggling between screaming muscles and his body’s cries for release and his desperate attempts to ignore both. He watches Logan’s face contort in ecstasy as he splatters the mirror with streaks of white, urging every last drop from him. Then… when his shoulders slump and his body relaxes, Eli lets go of Logan’s drained dick, puts both hands on his hips to hold him exactly where he needs him, and finishes in just a few short deep thrusts. 

Pulling out and away isn’t really a statement, so much as a necessity, as his legs threaten to betray him and he plops directly down on the floor, still trembling.

Logan joins him down there, leaning his back against the vanity, still breathing heavily. 

“Guess that’s one thing off the bucket list,” he jokes lamely. “At least for me… you never do say what you want, Wee- Eli, you know that?”

“Maybe I like to maintain an air of mystery,” he says, not a real answer.

“Oh yeah, a real mysterious vibe here on the bathroom floor after sex,” Logan laughs. 

_It’s not you I’m avoiding admitting shit to,_ he thinks but manages not to say out loud.

“Shut up,” he tells Logan instead, leaning in towards him and cupping Logan’s face, kissing his lips lazily, their tongues more teasing than territorial now. 

“Think of it as me owing you one,” Logan murmurs, their faces inches apart. “How can I make good on that if you never ask for anything?”

“You in my debt,” he feels himself smile. “That I could come to enjoy.”

Logan reaches out and touches the patch of skin marked by scar tissue instead of ink, the bullet hole that ripped Eli’s life and insides to shreds, tracing the outline. There’s something about the gesture that makes him feel like Logan sees right through not only his non answers, but past the excuses Eli makes to himself. 

Most of the time, Eli’s pretty sure Logan can’t see himself or even Veronica for who she really is, but occasionally there are these moments when he seems to see Eli more clearly than anyone else ever has: not for who he wants to be, or fears to be, not for the front he puts on or what he has or hasn’t done, but all of it for what it is.

Why it is Logan who can do that, he’s never been sure, but right now it feels okay to let him. Though Eli can’t resist reaching back, tracing the scars across Logan’s backside, which he’s seen more than once but never let his actions comment on.

_You can find my scars, but I spotted yours first._

Logan doesn’t push him away either, but crawls onto his lap and starts kissing him again, and Eli wonders if Logan realizes that there’s a connection between those scars and how he wants to be handled roughly. 

How would he react if next time Eli didn’t play that role, didn’t threaten and tease and press? Eli thinks about being gentle with Logan, soft and thorough, and wonders if he could take that. 

Is it something he and Veronica have talked about? Surely she can’t have missed the obvious signs, given how well she seems to know Logan’s kinks. Thinking about her makes him realize that he hasn’t been for a good long while, caught up in the past and present of whatever this is with Logan and him.

It’s one thing to tell himself again that their relationship meltdown is none of his business, even if they both keep dragging him into the middle of it. It’s another to realize just how much he has lost sight of that here with Logan. He suspects he’s not the only one who has either.

“You going to tell V about this?” 

He pulls away slightly, bringing the excuse of Veronica (and Logan’s justification that this could all be about getting back at her) back into play for either of them to crawl back into.

“And ruin all the fun?” Logan shakes his head and winds his arms around Eli’s neck, “Naw… I’ll let her do her thing: detect. What’s the excitement in giving away the surprise of where all these hickies came from?”

“Well then,” Eli shrugs, after all, he reminds himself, why should he care. As he’s repeatedly pointed out, it isn’t his relationship. Besides, neither of them has ever been willing to be the one to lose any of their games of chicken and he’s not about to start now. “I better make sure the clues are highly visible.”

“So Eli goes back to sucking on Logan’s neck, trying to think more about the salt taste of his skin than the mark he’s leaving to be seen by Veronica Fucking Mars.”

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to [sophiahelix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiahelix) for looking this over and giving me encouragement and some good advice about how to make it come together in the end. 
> 
> Also thank you to everyone who has commented on prior installments of this series over the years.
> 
> I know it has been three and a half years between installments on this series and part of that was that I had a bit of a writing dry spell, part of it was working on things in other fandoms, but also this marks a significant shift in the series from fun threesome adventures into the fallout of opening all those gateways of sexual and emotional tension and I was anxious about how fans of the series would feel about that. Hopefully there are still people out there interested in these characters and in the ways they continue to be the interpersonal equivalent of a five car pileup on the freeway.


End file.
